Setup different views

Now, as you look into this account, you will notice in the Views that they’ve tidied up the views into 1, 2, 3. This is a nifty trick so that the alphabetical ordering of the views only play by numbers.

A few things:

You’ll see that they’ve renamed their ‘All Web Site Data’ into ‘3 Raw Data View’

They’ve got ‘1 Master View’

And they’ve got ‘2 Test View’

So what exactly are these?

They are meant to separate the IP Address filters, so that you can work on amending Event tracking, etc. on Test View, before they are finalised and moved over to the Master View.

1 Master View

The Master view is where all the accurate data is found. In fact, you should set this up as your ‘Default View’ under Property Settings > Default View.

How to setup the Master View

Go under the ‘View settings’, and we’ll accomplish the following:

Change View Name: 1 Master View

Double-check Website URL is correct

Set Bot Filtering to ticked ✅

Afterwards, click ‘Done’.

And let’s move on to the Test View quickly.

2 Test View

We have the Test View as a little sandbox for everything that you will be changing about Analytics. This includes testing out that your Events are being tracked properly. Especially when you are the only visitor to the website, you will want to make sure that you are not the 1 of 5 visitors of the website, because that will have an impact on your data accuracy. We want to make sure that you create a Test View for yourself. More on creating this below.

How to setup the Test View

Select ‘Test View’. Go under the ‘View settings’, and we’ll accomplish the following:

Change View Name: 1 Test View

Double-check Website URL is correct

Set Bot Filtering to ticked ✅

Afterwards, click ‘Done’.

3 Raw Data View

Let’s simply leave ‘All Web Site Data’ untouched, and just rename it as 3 Raw Data View. That way, we have an unfiltered analytics view, as a backup should anything go wrong with our filtered views.

Add the 2 most important filters for the Master and Test Views

We will next have to setup 3 kinds of filters for your Master and Test views:

Include Only Internal IP Address

Exclude Only Internal IP Address

Include Only Hostname

Master View – Filters

The two filters for the Master View will be (in order):

Exclude Only Internal IP Address

Include Only Hostname

Test View – Filters

And similar order goes for the Test View as well:

Include Only Internal IP Address

Include Only Hostname

Now, let’s talk about the filters themselves:

Include Only Internal IP Address

This is on the ‘1 Test View’ so that you only track data coming from your current IP address.

The only thing you’ll have to do is add the Vertical line symbol | if you’re filtering multiple IP addresses per view.

Here’s a quick video showing how to setup the Include Only IP filter:

Exclude Only Internal IP Address

Here’s a quick video showing how to setup the Exclude Only IP filter:

Include Only Hostname

This is also dubbed as the ‘Anti Spam Filter’, because you will only be tracking hits coming from your domain name itself e.g. .sumnermic.com— how clever is that!

That way, if someone copies my analytics ID e.g. UA-589 and uses it on their own website and keeps pressing their Refresh button, my analytics using this filter will say:

‘No .example.com stranger, I’m sorry but I can’t input those page views onto your analytics UA-589, because those page views are coming from .example.com, and my filter only allows.sumnermic.com.

Here’s the setup video for ‘Include Only Hostname’:

Please Note: If you have a subdomain e.g. www. or shop., then I’d highly recommend you add a period . in front of your Hostname .example.com. So that it will only include data coming from your domain — which is safe.

If you do not have a subdomain e.g. http://example.com, that is okay, since no one is going to purchase a domain to spam just you!